MusicChat It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Matho The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

JohnHowardReid A brilliant 1932 Paramount offering is available from several public domain labels. My copy from Scooter rates at least 8/10. This is a movie for which there is no middle ground. I looked up the reviews. Half the reviewers thought This Is the Night the worst movie ever made. The other half held that it was the best movie of the year! Guess which half I agree with? I thought it one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen in my life. I was crying at the finish, it was so wonderful. This outstandingly attractive girl, played by the utterly entrancing and super-lovely Lily Damita, was being pursued all over Europe by an Olympic athlete played by Cary Grant. Most moviegoers consider Cary to be the handsomest and most desirable man in movies. Trailing along behind this romantic twosome was an old guy played by Charlie Ruggles, a comedian who is always cast as an ardent but perennially rejected old fool of a suitor. He's the comedy relief, you see. We always laugh at his earnest but tongue-tied efforts to impress the girl and his ridiculous bleatings about how much he loves her. Charlie has this part down pat. He plays it in dozens of films. He's been turned down, ridiculed and laughed at by many of the great sirens of the screen. Well, would you believe, at the end of this movie, the most beautiful Lily deals with stumbling, falling-off-ladders Ruggles in an entirely unique way? I couldn't believe my eyes and ears. I cried tears of joy. Who would ever think such a thing was possible? It seems the most beautiful girl is as intelligent as she is lovely. But there's no doubt about it, many movie fans are happier with the routine and conventional. They don't like being challenged by originality. And This Is the Night not only has an ingeniously constructed and highly original script to commend it, but marvelously adroit, sophisticated direction by Frank Tuttle (of all people!) who has evidently sought to out-Lubitsch Lubitsch - and has succeeded beyond all measure!

SimonJack "This Is the Night" is one of very few Cary Grant films in which he doesn't have the lead male role. At this early stage in his career, Grant played second fiddle to Roland Young. And that was more than just in the credits. Grant's Stephen Matthewson is about to lose his wife to the older and much less attractive Young, who plays Gerald Gray. The only possible explanation for this is that Gray is very wealthy – and unmarried. Stephen seems to have some sort of wealth himself, because he can go gallivanting around to track meets where he's a javelin thrower. In this film, Gray and Steve's wife, Claire (played by Thelma Todd) are about to leave Paris for Venice, Italy. That's while Steve is off to the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. But, Steve missed his wife and turned around at London to return home. He walks in on Bunny West (played by Charles Ruggles) who's a friend of Gray, as he is delivering two train tickets to Venice. West says he mistakenly delivered the two tickets to this address, when they were for Mr. Gray and his wife. Steve tells him to get one more ticket with that of his wife, because he will go to Venice with the rest. Gray then challenges West to find him someone to play his wife for the two weeks. Lili Damita enters the scene as Germaine. Much of the very light comedy occurs after this in Venice. West starts to fall for Germaine, while Gray and Claire get little chance to be alone. Before long, jealousies ensue, and Claire and Steve fall for each other all over again; and Gray and Germaine decide to marry. There isn't much more to this film. The plot had great possibilities for comedy, but the screenplay was just too lame. A bright, crispy, witty script could turn this into a roaring comedy. As is, it just passes as somewhat interesting and enjoyable. Grant has very little comedy here. Most of it comes from Ruggles and Young.

bkoganbing Although This Is The Night which is the feature film debut of Cary Grant is an enjoyable enough bedroom farce it probably has more significance as the possible inspiration of one of Paramount's best feature films of the Thirties, Love Me Tonight. This film directed by one of Paramount's more competent contract directors Frank Tuttle plays a whole lot like Rouben Mamoulian's classic. Possibly if Tuttle had better material to work with, this film would be better known.This Is The Night has Cary Grant as a French Olympic athlete whose sport is the javelin. But apparently he's not spearing Thelma Todd enough and she's casting a roving eye. The eye of Roland Young meets her's and the two plan a holiday in Venice.To which Mr. Grant arrives and rudely interrupts. Thinking fast on his feet as American Express agent Charlie Ruggles arrives with tickets at Todd's apartment, Young says that he'll be traveling with his wife and once outside frantically looks for a wife. He finds Lily Damita and hires her for a railroad holiday from Paris to Venice. Ruggles goes along as a fifth wheel on this carriage, presumably to catch whoever comes flying off the rebound. As he's soused most of the time, I can't see what appeal he would have. Of course I can't see what appeal he would have sober.Cary Grant was billed fifth in this film, but in 1932 he gradually went up the billing ladder and by the time of She Done Him Wrong, he's co-starring with Mae West. His debonair charm could barely be concealed in a role which required him to be a bit of a fathead.Ralph Rainger and Sam Coslow wrote a couple of forgettable songs and it's in the musical numbers that this film bares the closest resemblance to Love Me Tonight. Note the Italian gondolier in the Venice scenes. He gets no billing in the film, but it is Donald Novis one of the most popular singers of the day on radio. In three years he would move to Broadway and play the romantic lead in Rodgers&Hart's Jumbo where he would introduce The Most Beautiful Girl In The World and My Romance. Novis had a wonderful tenor voice as you'll agree if you see this film.Speaking of Rodgers&Hart maybe if they wrote a score as good as the one they did for Love Me Tonight, This Is The Night would be more remembered than as footnote as Cary Grant's feature film debut.

boblipton Frank Tuttle was a highly competent house director for many years, working for Sam Goldwyn, Paramount and so forth, turning out well-made movies in which the style served the story. In our day of auteur worship and the insistence that, if a critic can't tell who directed a film without looking at the credits, it is not a good film, craftsmen like Tuttle are considered hacks. I disagree. You may disagree with me. We'll leave that unsettled for the moment and thumb wrestle over it later.This movie has all the earmarks of a Lubitsch picture: the European settings (Paris, Hollywood, which Lubitsch said he much preferred to Paris France; Venice, where he had set the opening of TROUBLE IN PARADISE two years earlier) and is the sort of racy European comedy that Paramount specialized in until the Production Code killed them dead later that year. The setups are all Lubitsch: the recitative number "Madame Has Lost Her Dress" that opens the movie; The sexual imagery of Cary Grant carrying around a bagful of javelins and reducing Roland Young and Charlie Ruggles to blithering idiocy; Thelma Todd in her underwear; and into this mess lands Lily Damita, an honest girl reduced to sleeping on movie sets: trouble in Paris, Hollywood.Although Tuttle lacks the ability to direct actors in the small, exquisite details that Lubitsch did, he had a fine hand at framing and storyline. The movie is near perfect, except for the miscasting of Roland Young as the love interest..... but perhaps that is the point of the matter: we do not always fall in love with Maurice Chevalier.